The Sims 2 Wiki Guide

Constructing Buildings

Life isn't all about living. As the player, you must give your Sims homes and community lots for them to be in. Think of it like putting in scenery for a fish tank. The act of constructing buildings isn't much harder than that, but the knowledge of building GOOD buildings takes a bit of study.

Houses

The big mistake a lot of rookie architects make is that they tend to believe bigger is better. That's not always the case, especially The Sims 2. Take a look at the screenshots below.

Okay, the house on the left is obscenely bigger. But look at all the wasted space! A Sim would take forever to get from one bedroom to the bathroom, and then another eternity to the front door. This setup is ripe for problems when Sims need to get to work.

Meanwhile, the whole house on the right is smaller than probably one room of the mansion. However, there is little wasted room. While indeed the house is cramped, Sims can get from any one room to another in pretty short time.

Also, notice in both houses the distance from the dining room to the front door. When a Sim wakes up for work, usually he or she has enough time to eat and possibly go to the bathroom, then has to book it to the carpool. The house on left has great distance, so it's tough to have a Sim eat before heading out, and it's damn near impossible for it to get to the bathroom too without being late. Conversely, the house on the right has a very short distance between the front door and the dining room, so the Sim can easily get to the carpool without fear.

The key to building a good home is based on one word: layout. The order of the rooms, their placement in the building, is the number one important thing to all houses.

The first step you need to figure out when determining the home layout is the center: what room you think your Sims will most likely be in. Typically, the bathroom should be the most centralized, because a Sim's need to go usually preempts everything else. However, if you've got several bathrooms strategically placed throughout the house, you may not need a central one.

You also need to think about room size. While bigger isn't better, as was proven, you do need to have some size difference between each room. Have you ever wondered why bathrooms are always the smallest rooms in the house? Well, probably not, but the answer is because bathrooms NEED the least space. In both real life and The Sims 2, bigger rooms cost more in materials. That means more walls, more flooring, and more taxes due to the house being better.

You want to try to make all rooms as small as possible at first to conserve money for both the lot cost and the carpet and wallpaper costs. Taking that into account, you must think about what a room needs.

Dining Room: table (one-tile table for a family of three or less; two-tile table for family of four or more), one chair for every family member, one extra chair for a house guest

Bathroom: toilet, one-tile shower, one-tile sink

Bedroom: single bed for one Sim (or a double bed for two), one-tile end table, alarm clock

Extra: burglar alarm, phone

Notice what ISN'T listed: smoke alarms, lights, computers, desks, coffee tables, and more. The items above are the bare minimum to guarantee your Sims has everything they will need to survive, and rooms should be planned around that. Any additional items you want, while a factor, should be bought only if you have a lot of extra money after making everything else.

From the list, you can see that the biggest room will probably be your kitchen or your bedroom. The kitchen requires the most number of items, while the bedroom requires a bed, the largest item on the list. Again, build your rooms around the size of the items you buy and how they need to be placed. (Remember, single beds need one side clear, effectively making them 2x3 items. Double beds need both sides clear, effectively making them 4x3 items.)

One basic rule of The Sims 1 was to put two tiles' space between all items. Sims are smarter now and won't get tangled up as bad, but they still should have at least one tile space between items. Not only do they need to simply to get between items, but an extra space between items (especially between an item and a wall) will help keep Sims moving and not confused.

After determining the size and placement of your central room, determine how your Sims will get to other rooms, and connect them how you choose. Hallways are common, but not necessary. However, a good central hallway will help prepare the house for later expansion.

Actually, that's a good segue. Another thing you have to plan for is house expansion, unless you'll be satisfied for never changing things around. The biggest thing you have to plan for is actually not horizontal expansion, but vertical expansion. That's right, your houses can reach the sky, reaching four stories tall. Plus, with intelligent use of stairs, you can actually get Sims to the top of their roofs if they use flat-top mansard roofs!

The problem is there are no spiral stairs or teleporters in The Sims 2. Standard staircases are pretty large, so you need to know ahead of time where you're going to put them. You can't exactly put them in the middle of the living room, because they would be in the way of traffic and items.

As you can see from the top-left picture, the staircase is simply too in the way to be any good. With a little rearrangement, the staircase gets the external wall, and the couch goes on the other side of it, as show in the top-right picture. Notice also that the staircase is one tile away from the other wall. The reason for that is because the landing at the top of the stairs extends one more tile on the second floor. Because of that, if the staircase was right against the corner, the landing would be outside the walls.

A good technique for the second floor is to make a hallway from the landing, and then building off that. If you only have one hallway, it should NOT be on the short side of the house, like it is in the bottom-right picture. As you can see, with the rooms next to it, it cuts the house in half and prevents further expansion to the second floor without altercations to the first floor. Make your second-floor hallway on the long side of the house, but it doesn't need to be on an external wall. Here are two examples.

Both have the hallway going with the long side of the house, but the difference in placement changes how many and what size the rooms of the second floor are. Both methods are all right; it's a matter of what you're using the second floor for.

Community Lots

Lots built in the neighborhood are done so from city funds, and apparently the city has an infinite amount of money. In other words, you don't need to worry about scrimping and saving, so build them exactly how you envision them.

There are not too many choices for community lots. Right now, they pretty much break down to three categories: public pool, park, or shop. Note that these are informal categories; you don't actually categorize your lots. However, there are no tools for hotels and so forth that you could make on the expansion packs of The Sims 1.

Shown below are examples of lots. The top-left pic shows a grocery store; the top-right pic shows a park; the bottom-left pic shows the public pool; and the final pic shows an arcade.

As you can see from the grocery store, there are two cash registers on counters. That is the is the key to making any shop. In fact, Pyroville needs a bookstore and game store, so we'll just construct one now and you'll see what I mean.

First you have to build a blank lot, like we did for houses. Simply choose a size you deem appropriate for the lot. Being only a small bookstore and game store, a 4x3 lot seems right. Name the store, and be sure to select Commercial as the lot type. Then click your empty blue lot, and you can even enter a store description before entering the empty lot.

Okay, right now, there's nothing but grass, but that will soon be changed. Due to this store being a two-in-one combination, there will be two main sections joined by a hallway and a bathroom. Stones will link all three sections to the main sidewalk, and those will be lined with flowers to make it&#133; well, pretty. After wallpaper and windows, we've got this&#133;

See the doors leading into the bathrooms? Those are special doors that restrict access to those rooms based on gender; really the only reason would be to split male and female bathrooms. Still, while basically pointless, it certainly makes it more realistic. The look is completed with external dark gray bricks, and a flat black roof that is lined with a low metal border. (Most shops in the real world have flat roofs, not slanted ones.)

Save it, then head to Buy Mode. The first step is basic things like toilet stalls and sinks. You can find those in the Shop sort (the icon that looks like a cash register). You may want to put down a baby diaper changing station too, which are under the Miscellaneous sort. Following that will be a desk in each large area, and upon each will be a cash register. To get those, go into the Shop sort, then the appropriate sub-sort.

Okay, now we need to add the products being sold. Everything for sale, be it food, magazines, or clothes, has its own rack that you get through Buy Mode. You can find them in the Shop sort, and Miscellaneous sub-sort. Obviously the bookstore half needs magazine racks, and the game store half needs game racks. There is only one type of magazine rack, but two types of game racks: one free standing, and one that sits on counters. Both types are used for the game store.

Finally, the last touch is to give each room its ambiance. That means chairs for the bookstore, pinball machines for the game store, and so on. The bookstore also gets a wall speaker that plays R&B music, and the game store has wall speakers that play techno. Don't pepper the walls with speakers, because too many will shoot a Sim's Environment bars through the basement.

You could add lighting here too. While I do add hanging lamps in the bookstore, I add less for the game store. Game stores carry a certain attitude and have to be a bit darker, you know?

One save later, Pyroville has a new place for Sims to go. PTI Books 'N Games, the only place to buy&#133; well, books and games!